Back in the Red, Part 35
by Thesseli
Summary: Lister considers the possibilities once the crew is resurrected. Preslash. The sequel to this is 'Red Dawn'.


Back in the Red, Part 3.5  
  
  
"Well *talk* to me then," Lister pleaded from the top bunk. This was  
intolerable, that Rimmer refused to speak! And after all they'd been  
through in the past three days, since the 'Dwarf and its crew were  
resurrected.  
  
"*No*."  
  
"Look, I'm sorry, OK? How many times do you want me to say it? I. Am.   
Sorry," he stated, punctuating each word of the 'apology' by clapping his  
boots together.  
  
Rimmer glared back at him. "*No*. *You're*. *Not*."  
  
"It was an accident."  
  
"An accident?" Rimmer repeated in disbelief. "You poured a whole tube   
of it over me, you disgusting, rotting, fetid piece of congealed monkey vomit."  
His face twisted in distaste, and he turned away from his cellmate.  
  
"At last you're talking to me," Lister said in satisfaction, swinging his legs   
back up onto the bunk and picking up his magazine. He'd gotten what he  
wanted. "I knew we'd make it up." He glanced back at the story he'd been  
reading, as if it was now the only thing on his mind. "83..."  
  
Rimmer buried his nose in his book in disgust.  
  
Lister smiled gleefully, hidden behind the glossy pages. This was more like it!   
Almost like the old days. Almost like the old Rimmer. *His* Rimmer.  
  
He shook his head ruefully, at the thought of how much his opinion of the  
other man had changed. *That* was something he'd only just got used to, how  
he felt about the man he'd once referred to as a cancerous polyp on the anus  
of humanity (although the memory of that particular insult still made him  
laugh). Even though he had sworn that he would never, ever miss his former  
bunkmate -- especially after Kryten's AR masterpiece 'The Rimmer Experience'  
-- more and more he'd found himself thinking nostalgically about the past.  
Since the hologram had left to become the next Ace, things just hadn't been  
the same. He was glad for Rimmer, that he was off somewhere realizing his  
dream of being a hero and all, but deep down he knew that something was  
missing because of his absence. He also knew that, no matter how vehemently  
he denied it, he missed Rimmer. A lot. And it'd been getting worse  
lately. But then, when they'd landed on the newly reconstituted Red  
Dwarf, with the newly reconstituted crew...it was like something that had been  
switched off inside him had suddenly been turned back on, when he saw who'd  
been brought back with the rest. All right, the Rimmer sharing his cell wasn't   
*his* Rimmer, the hologramatic one that had kept him sane for all those years,  
but he was close enough! Too bad the nanobots hadn't remade this one in the   
hologram's image, with his memories. This one's personality was just as annoying   
and unpleasant as his Rimmer's had been in the beginning.  
  
But that could change. If his Rimmer could do it, could become slightly less  
of a smeghead than he'd started out as, then this one could too.  
  
He thought of the old Rimmer again, 'his' Rimmer. When had he started  
thinking of him like that, as 'his'? Lister wasn't sure; it just sort of happened.  
And why shouldn't it? They'd been through so much together. He was the  
only one of their small crew who'd been with him from the very beginning,   
when he was right out of stasis and he'd had to accept that the entire ship's   
complement was dead. Cat had shown up almost immediately afterwards,  
but then he wasn't a member of the original crew -- he wasn't even from  
Earth, and he didn't know how it felt to be so utterly alone in the universe.   
Rimmer did. Even though he'd been brought back after Dave had been   
awakened, as a hologram he could not touch anything and was effectively   
separated from the world around him. at least until they'd met Legion.   
After all that, he was bound to have some affection for him, smeghead or not.  
  
He grinned again. Affection was probably the last thing Arnold Rimmer  
wanted right now, what with the effects of the sexual magnetism virus still  
fresh in his mind. At least some of the virus had remained on his clothes,  
enough to infect most of the people trying to remove them, which had taken  
some of the heat (so to speak) off him. After being 'rescued' from the  
amorous advances of his fellow prisoners, Rimmer had been taken to the  
medical bay and checked out, then thoroughly decontaminated. A little too  
thoroughly, from what Lister heard. Well, he deserved to suffer a little,  
after trying to get us all framed. But he supposed he could forgive him.  
It was just Rimmer being Rimmer after all.  
  
And he'd always forgiven the other Rimmer.  
  
Lister peaked over the top of his magazine to steal a glimpse of the other  
man, so very much like his former shipmate, and smiled again. He'd already  
begun to see cracks forming in Rimmer's prickly outer defenses -- probably  
from Lister's unexpected treatment of him as a friend and comrade when he  
came on board, rather than as the git he'd been forced to bunk with. It had  
started the same way with the hologram. With time, the same mellowing would  
likely happen to his cellmate as well.  
  
And if Lister wanted to speed the process along, he still had an ace up his  
sleeve. Or rather, a virus. One he could infect himself with quite easily,  
with just a swig or two from the shatterproof pyrex container he'd kept  
carefully hidden from the guards.  
  
He hadn't poured the *whole* tube of it over Rimmer, after all.  
  



End file.
